Whether the Ohio State men’s basketball team will be at full strength for its Dec. 6 Big Ten opener at Northwestern remains an open question.
Coach Jake Diebler’s team is battling a rash of injuries to the starting lineup. Sophomore guard John Mobley Jr. watched the second half of Ohio State’s 67-66 loss at Pitt on Nov. 28 while wearing a walking boot on his right leg. Senior center Christoph Tilly played 32 minutes while dealing with an unspecified lower leg injury.
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Both are healing, Diebler said, but nothing has been decided about their status against the Wildcats.
“We’re progressing,” the coach said. “Moving in the right direction. Took advantage of the last few days for some guys. Went into last game a little banged up and came out not in a better place than we were going in. We’ve been spending a lot of time recovering while at the same time obviously having needed to get better on the practice floor.”
Mobley entered the game against Pitt as Ohio State’s second-leading scorer, but he finished with only 3 points on three shots, exiting with about two minutes left in the first half after being fouled on a jumper and landing awkwardly on his right foot.
Diebler said Mobley started the week resting and then the sophomore focused on mobility and strength work.
Limited by injury, Ohio State’s John Mobley finished with just 3 points on three shots against Pitt.
Tilly, Ohio State’s second-leading scorer now at 15.3 points per game, missed the second half of his team’s Nov. 25 home win against Mount St. Mary’s but did not appear on the injury report published by the Big Ten before the Pitt game. He played a season-high 31:42 and finished with 10 points but missed seven of his eight shots from the floor and finished with three turnovers and no assists.
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Diebler said Tilly’s injury impacted his productivity against the Panthers, and that he wasn’t the only player whose health affected his productivity that evening.
“We talked a lot after the game that one of the things we didn’t do well enough was handle some of that, just call it adversity,” he said. “That’s college basketball. You’re going to face that throughout the course of the year. He and multiple other guys dealing with some stuff leading into that game, they were out there, but we didn’t handle that adversity well enough. That’s part of learning and growing through that.”
Diebler’s hope is that Tilly gets to a point where his injury is no longer an issue.
“He’s hurting, or was hurting, certainly,” Diebler said. “When you’re dealing with lower-leg issues, it impacts you, certainly. But we feel like we’ve been able to gain some ground over the last handful of days. Hopefully, you’re trying to get him to a certain point where it’s behind him.”
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Ohio State men’s basketball beat writer Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @cdadamjardy.bsky.social or on Twitter at @AdamJardy.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State basketball injury report: John Mobley, Christoph Tilly update
